The effect of light, cold, etc., upon the details of a picture
Fundamental Device VI.—EFFECT OF LIGHT, STORM, COLD, ETC., UPON DETAILS. Paint¬ing as well as literature makes use of the effect of light and darkness. Some pictures also portray scenes by showing how objects are affected by the wind, rain, and other phenomena attending storms. Landscape painters can give an impression of intense heat or cold by putting into their pictures objects which accompany or are visibly affected by extremes of temperature. The two arts of painting and litera¬ture thus approach each other in the use of this Funda¬mental Device. A. MODEL 1.—THE EFFECT OF LIGHT OR DARK¬NESS. Seen in this light, surrounding objects lose their reality. A spectral glimmer renders them, as it were, transparent. Rocks become no more than outlines. Cables of anchors look like iron bars heated to a white heat. The nets of the fishermen beneath the water seem webs of fire. The half of the oar above the waves is dark as ebony ; the rest, in the sea like silver. The drops from the blades uplifted from the water fall in starry showers upon the sea. Every boat leaves a fur¬row behind it like a comet's tail. The sailors, wet and luminous, seem like men in flames. If you plunge a hand into the water, you withdraw it clothed in flame. The flame is dead and is not felt. Your arm becomes a firebrand. You see the forms of things in the sea roll beneath the waves as in liquid fire. The foam twinkles. The fish are tongues of fire, or frag¬ments of the forked lightning, moving in the pale depths. SUGGESTIONS.—What description-motive is this ? What details are affected by the light ? In what way? What is the funda¬mental quality of the thing described? Note the variety in the choice of verbs. How many verbs of action do you find ? Minor devices used. 1. Almost every item mentioned in the above description is compared to some other object : Cables like iron bars. Nets so many webs of fire. Half of the oar dark as ebony, the rest like silver. Drops fell in starry showers. Furrow like a comet's tail. Sailors seemed like men in flames. Your arm became a firebrand. The fish were tongues of fire. 2. The use of the second person in a general statement, "If you plunged." How many such statements do you find ? A. MODEL 11.-THE EFFECT OF STORM, RAIN, AND WIND. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian Aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm swept .finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber ; the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure, half ther and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foli¬age, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it color, it was con¬flagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life ; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbu¬tus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and sil¬ver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the gray walls of rock into a thou¬sand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. —JOHN RUSKIN, Modern Painters, Vol. I. SUGGESTIONS.—What description-motive is used in Model II.? What is the fundamental quality ? What objects in the picture are affected by the rain and wind ? Is the contrast between 'clouds," "wild weather," and "breaking gleams," of the first sentence, maintained throughout the passage ? What are the words that carry out this contrast ? What words and images suggest movement ? Minor devices used. six metaphors. C. MODEL.—THE EFFECT OF COLD. St. Agnes' Eve.— Ah ! bitter chill it was ! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold ; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold : Numb were the Beadman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. —JOHN KEATS, Eve of St. Agnes. Minor devices used. exclamation ; simile.